


leave my lips charred

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [20]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Pronoun Change, F/F, F/M, Gender Issues, Identity Issues, Let Solus Have Arms Strong Enough To Benchpress A Small Planet 2k18, M/M, The Raging Death That Is Arcee, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: It feels right. She doesn’t regret it.She doesn’t know what Galvatron would think.“It suits you,” Solus murmurs, when Arcee adjusts her public ID settings the next day. She leans over Arcee and kisses her neck - then her sternum –- and Arcee puts Galvatron out of mind.





	leave my lips charred

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains references to the AU continuity established in [ways of the stars undone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13732176/chapters/31549965) and [wind that shakes the seas and stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14607363/chapters/33761628) than to IDW's current canon. The planet that the Thirteen attempted to colonize in waysverse is called Thyatira, and Shockwave is not Onyx Prime, along with other significant changes. You don't need to have read ways to understand this fic, probably, but I'm sticking it in the series because it involves a lot of Arcee's tentative background.

Galvatron's shoulder pauldrons are red, and his hands grey.

His are grey, and red.

Arcee never gave much thought to it. The differences are superficial. Inconsequential. Complementary, even. Galvatron's cheek-guards angle up; his angle down. Galvatron prefers his battle-axe; Arcee guards his back with matched swords. When Galvatron strides forward in the arena, brazen and bold, he does so knowing that Arcee waits behind and beside him, ready to strike in the openings he creates. In negotiations with the Prime's armsmaster for rations and armor and better weapons, Galvatron speaks, while Arcee listens.

In all the ways that matter, he and his twin are alike. They have been together, always, since the moment their coiled sparks kindled. Galvatron rose first, forging the _sentio metallico_ of their shared roots with cast-iron certainty as he swiftly claimed his shape, and Arcee followed, twisting and unfolding and unfolding again in slow, careful stages to ensure everything was perfect. A match. Arcee cannot recall the actual memory files, but in his spark, he knows.

Arcee thinks this, as he knocks Galvatron to the ground.

It's too easy. Through the quick beat of battle that rushes fluidly through his mind, and the sick, numbing sense that he's watching himself do this from afar, he cannot understand why he's winning. They've always fought together; forced to fight each other now, for Septimus's sick amusement, they should be equals. They should have been able to fight each other to a standstill, until either Septimus's interest wanes or the attendants are forced to drag their frames off the field of battle. Or – in the quiet half-shadows of his mind, that part of him that always took a step back to let Galvatron to take point and shine – Galvatron should have overwhelmed Arcee in the first moments with his aggressive, relentless onslaught. Arcee wants to believe he would be content with that. The thought of continuing to exist, after killing his twin for Septimus's sport, terminates before Arcee can finish it.

But somehow, between the two of them…

There is no contest.

From the moment they take their first steps across the arena, Galvatron seems to be moving in slow motion. Arcee knows all his moves and counters them, seamlessly, his blades carving through Galvatron's bluffs and feints with fluid certainty. He knows it all, has seen it all from a step back and to the side. It's not a dance, but there is a beat, and Arcee barely registers the look on Galvatron's face as his instincts carry him forward to send Galvatron's ax spiraling away through the air and bowl him over backwards. They have the exact same center of gravity; Arcee knows exactly how much force to apply, and where.

They've only just begun, and yet Arcee's already at the killing stroke. He checks himself mid-step, and only belatedly does the cold hook of alarm sink into his spark and _twist,_ as he realizes what he's almost done. "Damn you – don't let me win!" he says, hoarse, choked, as he waits through the achingly long seconds it takes for Galvatron to forcefully roll back onto his feet.

It's the only explanation that makes sense: that for some impossible reason, Galvatron is throwing the fight.

But Galvatron staggers upright, casting his hand out to scramble for his axe in the tamped dirt, and Arcee sees nothing in his eyes but disturbed shock. "I have little _choice_ in the matter," he spits back, ventilations already ragged.

(Bitter. Accusatory, in a rush of fear he's not used to feeling.

That is the moment they begin to break.)

-

In Megatronus's army, Galvatron spars with only two mecha: Megatronus himself, and Arcee.

He considers it a point of pride. Megatronus gathers many other loyal, skilled warriors to his banner as he advances across the Darklands like a storm, but he has only two Twins. Occasionally, another warrior challenges them for their shared place as Megatronus's champions; only then will Galvatron deign to stalk onto the training grounds and demolish them for their impudence.

He cannot defeat Megatronus. They've fought each other to a standstill countless times, but far more often, their sparring sessions end with Megatronus quietly triumphant, or Megatronus stepping back with calm, assessing eyes, and informing Galvatron that they are done for the day.

Galvatron takes it with reluctant good humor. He clasps Megatronus's arm with easy camaraderie as Megatronus hauls him back to his feet. From anyone else, he'd take such presumption as an insult. But he respects Megatronus, as do they all. All of them strive to meet that distant standard set by their general.

Arcee watches from the sidelines, and says nothing when Galvatron strides past him with only a grunt of acknowledgement.

Arcee perceives it, now. How Galvatron, on some level, assumed that he was the better warrior. Stronger, faster, because he always outshone Arcee in roles they played in the arena. Not equals, as Arcee believed so deep in his spark. Arcee was merely there to - support him. A mirror angled just so, to reflect Galvatron's glory and talent to greater heights. Perhaps it was subconscious; perhaps it was simply unspoken.

Abruptly, jarringly, Arcee is better. Perhaps he always was, and they never realized because they were never apart. Or perhaps he changed - Galvatron certainly thinks so. At the end of one sparring match before an audience of curious, prying eyes, he snapped and accused Arcee of honing his skills separately, in private.

Arcee refuses to spar with him in public, after that. It stings. Each time they fight and Arcee wins, the presence of onlookers only leaves Galvatron blistering with the perceived humiliation. In his fairer moods, Galvatron tries to have Arcee demonstrate for him, with growing frustration. His fair moods blow darker, more often than not.

Arcee wants it to be familiarity. Galvatron's shame is baseless if it is only a matter of Arcee having memorized his sparring patterns. But even after Galvatron overhauls his fighting style, trimming away all but the last remnants of gladiatorial grandstanding, Arcee wins.

Again.

And again.

And again.

He tried to let Galvatron win exactly once. Galvatron realized at once and erupted in fury.

And it's not just Galvatron. When they take the field to cleave through the armies of those sent to stem the boiling tide of revolution pouring out of the Darklands, Galvatron strikes out alone. These are the legions of lesser Primes – appalling, uncaring slavers like Coriolanus and Iovita and Phalanx, barely more competent than Septimus in his carousing. Initially Arcee followed in his wake, as he has always done. Only after Galvatron shouldered him aside in a sudden flare of temper mid-battle did Arcee realize that he was not wanted.

So now, when Megatronus calls on his champions to level the playing field, Arcee walks alone. Where Galvatron goes, front lines shatter and formations disintegrate under the blows of his ax and his fists.

Where Arcee goes, armies die.

He doesn't know what to make of it. Or of himself. He has to compensate for Galvatron's absence, except in those rare moments in the heat of battle when he successfully fights his way to Galvatron's side and Galvatron, roaring with laughter, forgets to be bitter with him. In those brief moments, all is well again.

Then there is Arcee – and then there are hundreds of mecha between him and the enemy general – and then they are dead. If Galvatron is an explosion, Arcee is a knife to the spark. Arcee only stops when there's no one left to cut down, expressionless, so soaked with energon that he loses sight of the red and grey of his hands. If there's supposed to be some code of honor when a rival champion tries to step between him and their leader, Arcee doesn't know or care. He grits his teeth behind closed lips, and dispassionately fights until the bodies stop coming.

He earns his own reputation, distinct from that of the Twins. _Berserker,_ the Darklanders whisper, but that's not right. _The Raging Death of the Darklands._

He feels no rage. There is a part of him still that savors the challenge of battle, of getting to flex and stretch and test the limits of his ability. Even in the slavery of the arena, he and Galvatron shared that satisfaction in a fight well-fought.

No. There's no rage. Sometimes Arcee feels himself teetering on the edge of desperation – he fights harder, his twin blades sliding through armor and cords and seams with sharp, cutting efficiency. He flings himself into the waiting blades of the enemy, more than he should be able to fend off by himself with only two swords, and hopes.

Each time, he draws deeper on reserves he never knew he had, and when the dust settles he's killed them all too quickly for Galvatron to come to his aid. Each time, he stands alone over their grey frames, and waits, motionless, until the rest of Megatronus's army advances and Megatronus claps a hand to his shoulder to shake him from his mute daze. The healers cluck and fuss, but never have any difficult welding him back into one piece.

"Arcee," Megatronus says, when Arcee pulls away from the marble wall. Iovita Prime preferred ritual combat between two duelists at most. All the dueling arenas in her grotesque, sprawling fortress are paneled in rare, costly stone and crystal, and the Darklanders have taken great pleasure in tearing up the fields. The arena that Megatronus has claimed while they prepare for their advance on the Crystal City is now covered in skid marks and pitted with holes where fist-sized divots of marble have shattered under feet and fists.

Arcee halts, caught off guard. Megatronus rarely addresses him alone - despite the deep rift of dissonance between Galvatron and Arcee, they _are_ still the Twins. Even in his bitterness, Galvatron presents a single, united front when Megatronus's circle of councilors convenes. His voice sounds rough less often, now that he must speak for himself and cannot rely on Galvatron to be their voice, but it has been a few days and his vocalizer cracks when he answers. "Megatronus?"

"Spar with me."

It is not a request. Stiffly, Arcee crosses the scarred lines of gold that mark out the sparring arena and joins him in the center.

He can't recall if he's sparred with Megatronus solo before. When Megatronus came and brought Septimus to his knees, the gladiators who joined him in this campaign against the Primes faced their new leader so that he could grasp their strengths and weaknesses. Then, Galvatron and Arcee fought as a team – shaky, after facing each other in the ring - and Megatronus conceded defeat with his terrifying grace.

In all their sparring matches since then, Galvatron has only beaten Megatronus a scant handful of times. The same tricks he uses to gain the upper hand never work twice. Arcee observes every match. Megatronus controls the field between two combatants just as firmly and confidently as he does between two armies. He paces around the circle, not with the tense, hair-trigger reflexes of a mech on edge, but with the calm, steady patience of a judge taking a mech's measure. Arcee hovers, resetting his optics, unsure whether Megatronus intends for them to use live blades or not.

Then Megatronus steps toward him, and Arcee forgets to be unsure. Megatronus cycles through tactics with brisk precision, never committing himself to a single line of attack that might give Arcee an opening. He's not shy about using his greater height and heavier armor to his advantage, driving Arcee back with ground-eating feints, but he doesn't rely on it to the point of weakness, either.

He knocks Arcee down twice before Arcee shoves off the ground, locks both legs around his knee, and rolls him down.

"Better," Megatronus comments three bouts later, as though Arcee didn't jerk to a stop moments before he would've snapped Megatronus's armored neck. He watches Arcee with a thoughtful expression as he snaps his own dislocated wrist back into place with a no-nonsense _crrk_. "How long?"

"I don't understand the question," Arcee says, rising unsteadily on one knee twisted out of joint. They both stopped pulling their punches and went all out. Arcee feels more exhausted than if he'd fought three armies in one day; it's more of a workout than he's had since their earliest days in the arena.

Megatronus is more of a challenge than his own twin. That half-lit reflection of Galvatron's bitterness simmers in Arcee's chest, roiling like the surface of a sick sun, and he wants to scream. He wants to tear Iovita Prime's head from her shoulders a second time. He wants Galvatron to stop being so _damnably_ stubborn, and just let Arcee fight at his side again. The longer Galvatron acts like a spoiled brat who had his favorite blade taken away, the deeper the differences between them etch themselves into Arcee's spark.

If he fights like he _knows_ he can, now, Galvatron feels inferior to his twin. If he falls quietly back into place and limits himself the way he needs to, to fight as Galvatron's shadow, Galvatron only becomes incensed that Arcee is placating him.

There is no path to victory, here. Arcee can't solve this by cutting his own brother down like he would an army. He cannot win for losing.

And if he lets himself, he'll be just as furious with Galvatron as Galvatron is with him. It _burns_ , that Galvatron would assume Arcee was…weaker.

Megatronus cocks his head to the side. Understanding. Ruthless. "How long," he says, "since you stopped crippling yourself for your twin's sake?"

Arcee clenches his hand until the tips of his claws dig furrows into his palm. He can't identify the expression that ripples across his own face; his mouth twitches down until he forces the roiling emotions back down once more. "Galvatron and I are the same," he says, hollow.

"You cannot go backward," Megatronus says. "I will not let you pretend to be less than you are. The only path for any of us to take is forward."

Before he walks away, he rests a hand on Arcee's shoulder.

Galvatron, waiting in the doorway with a remote expression, might as well have stood a planet away.

-

Arcee dislikes Primes.

Some are more tolerable than others. He trusts none of them except Megatronus to remember the lesson they should have learned when the enslaved and downtrodden of the Darklands rose up and slaughtered the worst of the Primes. Nexus and Quintus Prime freed their slaves – their indentured servants, in Quintus's case – at the behest of this new Covenant negotiated between the twelve remaining Primes and Megatronus by Liege Maximo. All that means to Arcee is that they got away with it, without a shred of remorse.

But the world is changing. Three vast, ancient Titans rose up from deep within the earth when Megatronus's armies were on the brink of all-out war with seven Primes and brought the battle to a shuddering halt. One of them, Chela, had Onyx of the Primes courting his favor before the day was done. Over the next few thousand years, rumors came from abroad that other Titans had emerged, as well - not ancient figures out of legend, like Metroplex and Metrotitan and golden Chela, but Titans all the same. Mecha call their sudden appearance a divine blessing, heralding a new golden age of peace and prosperity for all. With the Titans forming cities, and the Citadel of Light and the Crystal City as two beacons of civilization for the north and southern hemispheres, they say, the millennia of raiding and warfare are behind them. Cybertron can be more than war.

Arcee doesn't care about all that. He's not sure _what_ he cares about, anymore. He stared up at the distant faces of the Titans, far above, and saw the end of an era.

Galvatron has a place at Megatronus's side. After Megatronus stripped away the last of their illusions, so many centuries ago, Galvatron threw himself into his work. He did not speak to Arcee for - some time.

Arcee can respect what Megatronus did and why he did it, in hindsight. But the two of them will never be the same again. It hurts, but Arcee accepts it in slow, painful stages. When they meet, awkwardly, every few months, it feels like talking to a stranger. There are subjects they can't approach without scraping sandpaper over old wounds.

The fact remains that Galvatron leads the defense of Megatronus's new shield walls. The Titan Kathikon's walls, to be precise. Civilization is slower to reach the Darklands, and while Megatronus has gained the sworn loyalty of most of the wandering tribes, raiders are still a threat to caravans from here to Kalydonian steppes.

Arcee is not a guardian. Arcee is a weapon. Megatronus welcomes him as one of Kathikon's defenders, as his champion still, but there are no more arenas. There is no more war. And Galvatron is…better, when they speak by messages, from afar. Less defensive. More himself. Arcee can almost pretend that the bitterness has passed.

So Arcee wanders. Megatronus accepts it, with a promise that Arcee will return and fight at his side if the Primes ever go astray.

(That is the oath all Darklanders have sworn: that if the Covenant fails and the Primes grow corrupt again, they'll sweep the whole world clean.)

Arcee learns the Darklands in the way he never could, trapped in the gladiatorial pits; then he travels further still, skirting the steppes that are Onyx's territory, and delves beneath the surface, into the caverns and underground reservoirs of Cybertron's underside. He visits the cities of the Primes, slipping through the shadows of their burgeoning cities and observing.

He is alone, so it can't be the same. But something inside Arcee relaxes when he can take a step back and let the strange new ebb and flow of society pass him by. He feels disconnected when he walks through the markets, but he almost prefers this – each Prime's territory has its own incomprehensible quirks and fashion and etiquette that Arcee is completely disinterested in learning.

It is not something Megatronus would ask of him; it just feels like a duty Arcee needs to fulfill. Someone needs to watch.

Nexus and Quintus, he keeps the closest eye on. Lest they fall back on bad habits. Nexus's split Titan, Fusion, lies near the pole, but they toe the line on the Covenant's pact. Quintus's city is more difficult to observe discreetly. Beast mode Cybertronians were dispersed throughout the Darklands – maybe a quarter of the population, but Arcee knows well how they were treated in the gladiatorial arenas. As those with beast alts now make pilgrimage to Chela on the steppes, those with more insectoid alts swarm Quintus Prime's city of Aletheia, in the furthest reaches of the iron desert. Each time Arcee visits, it grows harder to approach the citymode Titan unaccosted; foreigners are treated with unyielding politeness as they're shown the road out, and the locals have an uncanny knack for noticing someone trying to blend into the controlled flow of trade caravans. One bumbling, sweet-tempered wasp guard in the outer patrol ring gets into a tizzy whenever Arcee stalks up to him and doesn't report Arcee's passage as long as he's willing to exchange a few words. Arcee can sweep the city by night, but can't linger to get a sense of the Prime's intentions. Quintus is an enigma, even among his own.

Onyx is dangerous but – at least nominally – Megatronus's oldest friend and ally. Micronus and Alchemist sojourn between the Crystal City, the Citadel of Light, and their own holdings, while Amalgamous spends most of his time squabbling with an impassive Quintus over the river that forms a border between their territories. Epistemus might as well be a non-entity, consumed with her abstractions and equations and leaving much of the governance of Hypatia to her chancellors. Alpha Trion spends centuries in seclusion, trying and failing to bond with the Titan Metroplex, while occasionally venturing back to the Citadel of Light to ingratiate himself with Prima, with no significant land holdings or followers of his own to speak of.

Vector is one of the more politically active Primes, but her approach is…odd. Arcee can't pin it down. Tempo is a hotbed of political philosophers, metaphysicists, cosmologists, engineerists, writers, and thinkers gathered from all corners of Cybertron, the city's concourses and schools and temples constantly awhirl with the latest theories, and just standing too close to the city limits gives Arcee a throbbing headache. Vector Prime herself is often deep in the thick of it, draped in gold-circuit memory-cloth, so that rival thinkers can fearlessly debate her in the public squares. And the people are proud of it – the Crystal City may be the seat of day-to-day Primal politics, and holy cities like Tetrahex and the Pious Pools places of theological significance, they say, but Tempo is the beating spark of scholarship and thought of Cybertron.

The fields of Rhoedeion lie by the shore of the sea. The area is convenient for more than one reason – it's centrally located, and two Primes live in close proximity to each other there, one for each Titan. Liege Maximo, Prime in Vigilem, is a consummate diplomat with a silver-tongued, on friendly terms with his nearest neighbor just as he is with every other Prime. Like Alpha Trion, he doesn't use the title Prime, but his motivations are inscrutable and Arcee mistrusts him as a career politician. He spends too much time smoothing over disputes between the other Primes and raiding tribes, and too little time revealing his own stake in things.

But of all the Primes, the only one who truly makes Arcee uncomfortable is Solus.

Primarily because Solus invites her into her quarters for a drink, without even looking up from her forge.

"You've been lurking for a while," the Prime says. The _crash_ as she brings her Forge hammer down on the anvil startles Arcee less than the shock of being addressed directly, for the first time in what must be years. "Must be thirsty work."

Most of Caminus lays open to the air. While the Camiens fill the Titan's open streets with art, song, and dance, the metalworking forges of their Prime are located in ventilated, closed halls, due to the bizarre, experimental nature of her more volatile creations. Others – metalsmiths of lesser talent, glassblowers, jewelers, potters – work in shared halls to craft the luxury goods and ceramics that Caminus is known for.

Caminus's reputation is deceptively frivolous, Arcee has found. Solus Prime creates dangerous _things_.

Solus Prime presses the side of the unfurled golden spiral that coils around the back of her helm. The visor of light before her face winks out, and the Creation Lathe folds beside her temple. When she steps away from the forge, hands still white-hot with the heat of the Forge, she stands two meters taller than Arcee. That odd knot of discomfort in Arcee's chest squirms, and Arcee tears his gaze away from the Prime's face, burning with embarrassment.

He's never known how to interpret his spark. In times of doubt, he could take cues from Galvatron. Galvatron always knew himself with utter certainty, and they were the same, naturally.

He tenses to bolt. Solus's smile is wry, her optics glittering with amusement. "I have no quarrel with Megatronus," she says. "But you're not here on his behalf, are you? So come, Dark Twin – I would be a poor host if I didn't offer you a drink."

-

She realizes approximately three thousand years later.

It's not any one thing – it builds gradually. Maybe it would have taken longer, without spending time with Solus, but Arcee thinks it would have crept into her awareness eventually. Wandering alone, isolated, Arcee rarely gave thought to her appearance, or her self. For so long, it was easier to trust to Galvatron's intuition for such things. She simply had no strong feelings on the matter, as far as she could tell; or they weren't strong enough to override Galvatron's influence. Galvatron never lacked for self-assurance.

But the bitterness fades. The world turns. And Galvatron is so rarely around, their messages few and formal and far between.

Arcee changes her internal pronoun settings on impulse, between one blink and the next, and then freezes there in front of one of Solus's mirrors, as she processes what she's done. What she's decided.

It feels right. She doesn't regret it.

She doesn't know what Galvatron would think.

"It suits you," Solus murmurs, when Arcee adjusts her public ID settings the next day. She leans over Arcee and kisses her neck - then her sternum –

\- and Arcee puts Galvatron out of mind.

-

Thyatira changes - everything.

Arcee returns to Megatronus's side during her last round of Cybertron to join him on the voyage. The Primes make no secret of their plans: Prima declares it from the Citadel to public acclaim, and all of Cybertron stirs with excitement like a kicked wasps' nest as they prepare for their crusade. Emissary, the gold and white Titan who has never served as Prima's city, promises to willingly carry them away from Cybertron to another world.

Solus takes little interest in it. Prima commissioned a weapon from her for the conquest of the stars, but the last few times Arcee visited, Solus was absorbed in some other project. In moods like these, very little can stir Solus from her creative fugue short of Caminus rearranging its walls to cut her off from the forges.

But Arcee has a duty.

Most of the vanguard consists of familiar faces. Arcee avoids them just as she does the new. Onyx, Nexus, Quintus, Amalgamous, and Prima are all here today, with Alpha Trion to observe and record their deeds, and Megatronus only by Prima's specific request. Arcee stares down any who move as though to intercept her, her eyes narrowed and her mouth a thin line. She doesn't like the majority of the Primes, but Nexus and Quintus together make her bristle with distrust. Megatronus greets her with a clasped arm, his expression guarded and neutral, the mask he uses in the presence of the Primes. "Arcee," he says.

"I don't suppose we could kill the others and skip the trip," Arcee mutters, lightly, and only half-ironically. A burst of equally ironic amusement flickers in Megatronus's optics, but aloud he only snorts.

"Arcee?" Galvatron repeats a month later, aboard Emissary.

She thought he'd simply been too busy marshalling the gaggle of young Kathikon-forged troops. They're barely a few hundred thousand years old, and rowdy with it.

But no. He hadn't recognized her.

He stares at her, his face open and incredulous. The hesitation lasts a fraction of a second too long; Arcee realizes, belatedly, that he expects her to say something to confirm it. She inclines her head with a jerk.

It's been a few million years. She repainted her primary armor black, after spending too long a time agonizing over the grey and red of her hands. There's no reason for him to have known.

His embrace, when it comes, feels clumsy. Off balance. As though the pieces of them no longer fit together into a perfect whole.

Then Thyatira is an unmitigated disaster. Arcee wants to spit in disgust at the self-satisfied assumption on Prima's face as he declares to the native inhabitants of the planet that they have been chosen for the _honor_ of becoming part of something greater. A colony, dedicated to Alpha Trion, as the eldest and most respected of them. She folds her arms over her chest to restrain herself.

When the Thyatirans answer Prima with an opening salvo, Arcee shakes her head with a snort, and steps back into the Titan ship to wait. Megatronus is no fool; he overrides the other, idiot Primes and marches them back on board while Galvatron's troops guard their retreat.

The world is a cooler, tenser, darker place when they return. Prima and Megatronus spent the trip back shouting loudly enough that closed doors did nothing. Under the sting of humiliation, unease seeps into their sparks.

_Who is to blame?_

An idiotic question. Prima emerges from their sequestered arguments with a set jaw and raised chin, his white cape swirling behind him as though he's done no wrong.

"It was stupid," Arcee says, off-handedly. Despite the long years apart, Galvatron falls in with her with silent ease; he stands on the edge of the ramp, arms folded behind his back with unfamiliar discipline, while she leans against the shadowed wall where he found her.

Galvatron does not disagree. "You did not fight," he says, instead.

Why bother? From the moment Prima decided to press forward in the knowledge that there were other sapient beings on the planet, he became no better than the dross like Septimus. Before, Arcee marked him as little more than a figurehead for other interests in the north; now, she knows him for a fool, and a danger. "There was no point."

Only then does she realize that Galvatron is shaking.

"I do not know you anymore, brother," he says. He sounds broken.

Guilt writhes inside her for five seconds. Something jagged and sharp intercedes, and Arcee becomes a statue.

Once, she knew Galvatron's thoughts before he spoke them aloud. She walked in his shadow and moved as an extension of his own arm; she never knew when the devotion stopped being mutual, and Galvatron began to take her for granted.

And she knows that when Galvatron says he does not know her anymore, it upsets him. It's not enough for him to have led Kathikon's forces, to have achieved a worthy life and accomplishments distinct from Arcee's own. He wants her to have not changed – to have remained static, stagnant, in the template he set for her. Someone he could rely on without thought. He built his sense of self on the solid foundation of her support, and now it has all crumbled away.

Because if she's not him, then what is he?

She hates him a little for it. Unable to bite back a bitter twitch of her lips, Arcee turns without a sound and drops to the ground to walk away, unseen.

They do not speak again for a few million years.

-

Megatronus comes to Caminus to brood.

It's common knowledge that he and Prima remain at odds. The cities of the northern Primes, the ones that Prima brought into the alliance, whisper of sabotage. That Megatronus lashed out at the Thyatirans prematurely, out of spite or brute stupidity, to ruin Prima's grand vision of a Pax Cybertronia. The Darklands simmer with discontent at the perceived insult. Unrest. There are other planets that are suitable candidates for the proposed expansion, but Thyatira rebuffs all further attempts at diplomatic contact. They are not interested, it would seem, in being annexed into an incipient empire.

Arcee keeps her distance. She does her rounds of the Primes' territories more often, and doesn't like what she sees. But there is little for her to say, and few for her to say it to. Of the three she might have confided in, Galvatron…is not available. Solus is preoccupied with her latest invention, sometimes venturing out into the wilderness and vanishing for decades. She goes once to consult with Prima on an unrelated matter and returns frowning and close-mouthed.

Megatronus nods curtly when Arcee brings him word, but it is nothing he has not already heard. Occasionally the two Primes ensconce themselves in rooms within Vigilem with Liege Maximo, who seems concerned by the lingering resentment in the Covenant and Prima's odd, petulant reaction to any overtures.

"Come here often?" Arcee asks idly, the fifth time she and Megatronus pass each other in a closed hall, one coming from Solus's quarters and one going.

It sparks the first smile out of him that she's seen since the dark mood of Thyatira settled on him. Solus negotiates the two of them well; both Megatronus and Solus have their own frustrations to work out, and they seem the better for it after Megatronus starts to pay court with sharp smiles and wit and gifts of obsidian blades and onyx beads. Arcee's barely familiar with any of that: it was never something pit gladiators needed to know. What she has with Solus is softer.

She returns from one last, unproductive trip to Aletheia, and slips into the Forge, through one of the ventilation entrances that Caminus always leaves open for her.

Solus is on the floor, with a hole through her chest. The ragged edges look as though they've melted like wax.

Megatronus stands there, staring at nothing, so still that for a moment Arcee thinks he's just as dead, his frame not yet fallen to the ground. The Forge hammer falls from his slack hand a moment later, still seething with heat.

Arcee doesn't remember screaming. Megatronus stumbles back out of her range, his expression a broken, cracked, crazed thing through the sharp fractures in Arcee's vision. That half step back is all that saves him from dying, before Arcee hits her knees and forgets her own killing momentum. Solus's face is set firmly, her mouth parted slightly. Arcee cannot interpret her expression; all her old tricks for understanding others' faces, learned with Galvatron's confident tutoring, slam into the sharp edges of Arcee's mind and shred into nothing.

Her hands close spasmodically on nothing – on air – and then on something besides Solus's greying face.

The last howl cuts off mid-scream as Arcee mutes her own vocalizer. She clutches something in her hand as she bolts, unwilling to see the faces of the Camiens who pour through the door in the wake of Megatronus's flight.

-

Arcee loses some time. It's easy to do that, underground. The underside of Cybertron is a shadowy, cool place; her thoughts seem to get lost in the echoing dark.

Two million years later, she climbs back to the surface. The Lathe is long gone – buried somewhere that she only half remembers, the only tribute she can think to give. She's tried to piece those last fractured moments together into a coherent narrative, but she's no good with stories. When she attempts to understand how it all broke, her processor stops with a dull thud when she thinks of Solus and Megatronus.

No. It broke earlier than that.

She should never have left her twin.

Some fool part of her seizes on that. She goes to Kathikon, without slowing or turning aside for anything. Nothing else in the world concerns her, anymore. Whatever the Primes have done since Solus's death, it's all irrelevant.

But Kathikon is gone. And the world hasn't stopped changing.

When she finally finds Galvatron, a century after she resurfaces, she finds him in a changed Crystal City. _All_ of the Titan cities are gone – and the Primes along with them. From what rumors Arcee gathers along the way, no one knows exactly _where_ most of the Primes have gone. They vanished, after a civil war that destroyed the Covenant and buried the Crystal City. Of all the Primes with all their faults that Arcee once knew, the fate of only a few is certain.

Solus is dead.

Megatronus is dead.

Liege Maximo is exiled, accused of inciting Megatronus to betray them all.

And Nexus is dead, at Galvatron's own hand.

That hasn't stopped him, ironically, from allying with a new Prime. Nova. Arcee can't place the name or the face. But after Megatronus's death, Galvatron rose up from the chains of the renewed gladiator pits and scythed through the feuding Primes until he finally succeeded in killing one, and Nova joined him in conquering the rest of the headless, panicking armies when the surviving Primes vanished one by one.

Crystal City has tripled in size since the days when it was the seat of the Covenant, and is now a thriving, industrialized city. Civilization has centralized under only one Prime, and those cities recovering after the civil war develop strong trade ties along the network of highways Nova Prime has sponsored to link them. Luna-2 is now regularly visited by more than just the rare, elusive shuttle frames; there is a flourishing city in the sky above, with expansive mining operations. There is talk of a Senate, based on one of Vector Prime's old ideas. A Golden Age of peace, prosperity, scientific progress, and exploration.

Which means that there's no room in the world for bandits and nomadic tribes, anymore. The Darklands are well mapped these days. The wilderness of the Kalydonian steppes is being ploughed over to make room for fuel processing plants in Onyx Prime's absence. Arcee walks the silvery, shining streets of the Crystal City, and feels like a clot of dirt stuck to something beautiful. A grimy, discolored relic of a bygone age.

Some fuchsia idiot attempts to stop her from entering Galvatron's quarters. She sweeps his feet out from under him and throws him out a window in one fluid motion.

Galvatron looks pained. "Arcee. Must you?"

"He can fly," she says with a shrug. That _was_ a flight alt. Definitely.

He's altered his frame slightly. Purple, now. Bulkier. Three short prongs, instead of horns. Apparently it's fine if he does it. Power seems to agree with him. "Cyclonus is my most trusted bodyguard. I would appreciate him remaining intact." Then, more gruffly - "I thought you dead, brother."

She doesn't correct him. Arcee barks out a dry laugh instead. "Your _bodyguard_? You're joking." The rooms are more spacious than anything they've had before, but she didn't think he'd gone so soft he needs someone else to fight for him.

Galvatron grimaces. It's odd now: he picked up hints of Megatronus's mannerisms, over the millennia. It used to relieve Arcee - that Galvatron had a solid leader to look to, an example to balance against his own unpredictable, violent moods without Arcee there to temper him. Now he cocks his head to the side, listening, and the resemblance makes Arcee grit her teeth.

She's distracted enough that Cyclonus bursts through the window and slams into her before she can react.

-

The bitterness is petty, now.

Cyclonus isn't young, but he's younger than them. He's rigid, austere, and fights like someone trained with a stick up his aft. Despite that, he lasts five minutes before Arcee loses patience with him and stubbornly keeps getting up after she starts breaking vital bits. Competent enough.

(She went easy on him. The interface must be phenomenal, because Arcee has no idea how else someone as stiff as this managed to make Galvatron picky enough to yell about a broken leg.)

When she trails after him, to get a better sense of the mech who has replaced her, the first place Cyclonus goes after emerging from the healer's hall is a temple.

Religions have sprouted like weeds since the Primes fell. People will worship anything from the idealized Primes to the first moon to the popular, made up stories about five gods who created the whole world. Arcee has no idea if this particular cult has any connection to the rites held in places like Tetrahex and the Pious Pools; she never bothered with any of that, and it seems just as pointless now. Cyclonus bows to the keeper of the temple in silence - he's a familiar sight around here- and kneels gingerly by the circle of liquid mercury in the center. He murmurs in a lyrical dialect of Cybertronian old enough that it makes Arcee wrinkle her nose; his accent is atrociously grim.

This particular sect doesn't appear to be popular; once the keeper leaves, they're alone. Arcee strides over, letting her feet _clack_ sharply against the floor to announce her arrival. "Does that actually do anything for you?" she asks, scanning the golden etchings on the walls with a critical eye.

"I find it meditative," Cyclonus murmurs, without lifting his bowed head.

He doesn't like her. The feeling's mutual.

Arcee tosses her head with a snort, leaning back against the wall and folding her arms as she stares down at him with narrowed optics. "If you say so." Then she stares and stares, trying to dig into the mech with her eyes alone to decipher what Galvatron gets out of this. It's more difficult than usual; Cyclonus holds himself oddly, unnaturally stiff, and none of the patterns she's memorized seem to fit right.

"He answered, once," Cyclonus says, as he raises his helm. "When I first prayed in the shadow of the Titans, I heard the voice of Metroplex."

Which means he's about as accomplished as Alpha Trion, the washed-up old hack. "Congratulations."

Cyclonus shifts his weight and tilts his head. He scans her body language with a faint furrow between his brows, with the look of someone studying an unfamiliar text. So, that's how it feels to be on the other side of it. Maybe his social processing centers work as atypically as her own; maybe he just needs more practice. "You don't care."

"Not particularly." Arcee pivots on her heel and walks away, her steps too loud. "My twin is your problem now."

If Cyclonus is content to walk at Galvatron's heels and be nothing more than a sword in his hands, more power to him. Arcee might envy him for having what she's lost - a seething poison in her lines, contemptuous and cold - but she can't go back. None of them, she thinks, can be what they once were.

She's been replaced. Galvatron has moved on.

-

But she lingers in the Crystal City. Aimless. Detached.

That's a mistake.

-

Jhiaxus wants to know how twin sparks work.

It is, he says, very critical to his research on bonds and combination. It should only take an hour, at most. The scientist is unpleasantly unctuous, but he's a member of Galvatron's cohort, and Arcee is indifferent.

She wakes up to restraints she can't break, and Galvatron does not come for her. She's not sure if he knows or not. She's not sure which would be worse.

Arcee feels the last link she has to Galvatron snap and knows she's going to kill Jhiaxus. _She's going to **rip him apart.**_

If Galvatron let this happen, she'll kill him, too. If he felt the bond snap, he doesn't arrive or give some other indication that he cares.

She's done with him. He doesn't matter anymore.

Arcee stops screaming, and waits for Jhiaxus with teeth bared in a smile. Her spark is a numb, distant thing.


End file.
